Literacy Narrative pt. 2 reflection

Creating this part of my literacy narrative was a huge change from having to just write my thoughts out on paper. In this part of the literacy narrative project, I was able to express my thoughts in a visual manor by drawing out comic panels. I found this much easier to do rather than write everything down as I am a visual learner, meaning when I formulate ideas in my head they are almost always presented as pictures. From there I normally would have to translate those images to words to complete what ever assignment I am writing. For this assignment, however, I was just able to draw what I originally imagined in my head, which made the process of brainstorming and organizing my ideas a lot less strenuous. I didn’t have to spend excess time making sure what I was writing lines up with the idea I had in my head, I could just let my thoughts flow.

Drawing out my literacy narrative in comic form made me realize that in the alphabetical form, my tone is a lot more aggressive towards technology than I want it to be. I found that in the comic literacy narrative, I was able to show that there are pros and cons for both a life with and without technology. In the alphabetical version, however, I seem to favor the life without technology which is not the intention I wanted to give. Due to this realization, I have plans to go back to the original literacy narrative and edit it to make it highlight the pros and cons of technology.

One of the biggest choices I made when creating this comic was to only use pencil. I knew from the beginning I didn’t want to use color as I had chosen a very simplistic style of drawing and using color would have taken away from that style. Originally, I wanted to outline all the lines with pen, to make the lines much bolder and easier to see. In the final product, however, I did not end up outlining anything with pen. This is because I began to use the technique of shading in some of the comic panels. I thought that if I used pen to outline the drawings it would take away some of the depth that the shading creates. In the final product, it is somewhat hard to see the shading as the scanner did not pick it up very well (it’s easiest to see on page 3).

When writing drawing out this comic, I was able to practice some of the learning outcomes we discussed as a class. Two of the ones I found the most prevalent for this project was “Visual Thinking” and “Writing as Process”. I noticed myself using visual thinking when I was planning out how to arrange my comic. This really helped with organization of my ideas and let me spend less time brain storming and more time creating. I found myself using “writing as process” during this assignment as I went through multiple drafts of my comics. Each time I made a draft I got peer feedback witch allowed me to improve on my project.